Not for the faint hearted: a drug free birth, with no man in sight.

Not for the faint hearted: a drug free birth, with no man in sight.

I am the only women I have ever met who escaped from her births unscathed. Not a mark on me: even the old girl is more or less what she was, give or take a little elasticity.

I gave birth at home, with five canisters of gas and air, two white witchy- midwives, and my husband, who make a tactical exit when they started fishing in the birth pool. I would have been happy for him not to be there at all. It’s inhibiting, your lover watching you give birth. Your body goes through a grotesque transmogrification at the bump moves down like a snake swallowing a rat. There are fluids, and you emit noises and grunts that are outside your usual vocal range. I was lucky there was no intervention, and Jonah arrived blue into a black pool of detritus some day and a half after he had begun his long journey from my womb to my arms. I was escorted down to the bathroom where I turned the floor scarlett with blood, but my body would recover, with nerry a scratch.

I was having sex again in two weeks – probably not to be recommended, but I was 24 and had a point to prove, and wanted to test out what having a head pass through my nethers would do to my undercarriage. It was raw, and loose, and unsatisfactory but over time I knitted back together, and sex was better, not worse.

This Telegraph article, about one doctor’s quest to return to a less medicalised view of childbirth questions the long term consequences for  birthing women of routine intervention, drugs and caesareans.

I wouldn’t recommend a home birth to first time mums. The gas and air ran out, and the duplex was trashed for my son’s arrival. I soiled sheets and never quite recovered as well wishers poured through my doors, while I leaked christ knows what as I went to fetch tea.

But those witchy midwives, they saved my vagina, that’s for sure.  And if they are to be believed, ensured my breastfeeding, which is aided by a natural delivery, went without a hitch, and the wearing of cabbage leaves in my bra for days afterwards, which they insisted upon to detoxify my ducts as my milk painfully came in – a pain I could stomach after the shock of what went before – prevented me from getting mastitis.

They didn’t want a man around. They wanted to knit in the corner while I labored alone, not  to watch a performance of a women in birth for her husband, which is what, I expect, to begin with at least, it was. By the end, my concentrated silence told Tom to keep his distance, and he did, watching me as I went into a place I’d never gone before.

Two and three quarter years on, I hypnobirthed Ava and she breathed into the world in the pristine water of a birth centre. There was an echo of the brutality of Jonah’s birth, but as it rose, it fell as swiftly and she was born in hours with relief. We left that afternoon, having received her grandmother, her brother and a delivery of doughnuts, which I felt I deserved.

I am proud and defensive of my birth choices, but also a little smug. If I’d been in hospital I would have demanded drugs, intervention, a cesarean. I may have been cut, when Jonah got stuck behind my coxis, his head may have been flattened by forceps as they tried to drag him out. I may have struggled to produce milk as my birth was induced, and the delicate succession of hormones that tells your body to produce milk failed to be triggered by my baby passing through the birth canal, picking up beneficial bacteria as he, and then she slid into the world, which made them both less susceptible to allergies.

All these things happened to women I knew, and I remain nearly eight years on, the only person I know who has no battle wound from my babies, and they have no battle wound from me. My births were as damn near perfect as they could be, thanks to the experienced midwives – who had both time and patience – and a calm and respectful Tom, to help me get through it unscathed.